


Discrepencies

by ThreeSorrows



Category: Ready Player One - Ernest Cline
Genre: Alternate Universe, Basalisk, Cat Siths, Changelings, F/M, Fantasy Creatures, Gods, Magic, Sirens, Technology, fae, fire sprites
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-17
Updated: 2018-04-17
Packaged: 2019-04-23 23:45:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,627
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14343486
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThreeSorrows/pseuds/ThreeSorrows
Summary: Poison has crept into the world, forcing the creatures of old away. As technology grows and grows they fade farther and farther away. But the OASIS is different, it's special. It's a place where the magic has collected and is woven into the false world just as deeply as the poison.(Few bloodlines have survived this long, but magic has a funny way of collecting in important people and drawing them together.)





	Discrepencies

James Halliday’s mother was a changeling child. A person who had been abducted from a young age to serve in the Fae courts, worlds of wonder that pulled you in and drove you mad. Places that held on once they had a taste and never ever let go. They would stay there, never aging, until their service was complete and they were released back into the human world. If they were ever released from service. _(After all the Fae had a nasty habit of keeping what they broke)_

Over the centuries that spanned humanity's rise to power the Fae had abducted less and less human children. Maybe it was because they no longer needed any new servants, or it could be that humans were harder to fool with glamours now. Most likely it was the poison running through souls that lashed out at eldritch contact and took away chunks large enough to mortally wound. Their fight had been a silent one and one they had lost.  _(But they never really lose, they only smile as you escape from them and sink back into the shadows as your best friend pushes a knife between your ribs)_

Some would call her one of the lucky ones, those who escaped mostly intact back to Earth and back to other humans, at least, those that wouldn't call her insane. But what no one had never realized was the fact that she hadn't wanted to go. Very few ever do. Time had blurred together for her in that place, it was a moment, it was a millennium, before she was dumped back onto the same playground a few moments later. She had come back before anyone had even realized she was gone with magic humming in her bones and electricity singing in her blood. His mother was searching, always searching, for a way back even as she was torn apart from the inside. 

Her very soul was ripped out piece by piece and it bleed her mind from the open wounds. Everything she touched held onto her and didn't let go until she stopped holding on to whatever it had grabbed. Tear by tear the house became more alive and she inched closer to death. An empty shell of a puppet walking around with broken strings until the last one finally snapped. James was her only child, the only one to share her curse. If there had been children taken away since her they had never been returned, they had died in the realm she had always tried to get back to. But even he wasn't the same as her. 

Perhaps it was his father's blood that had saved him, maybe it was the fact that he had been born with Fae and poison already flowing at a sluggish pace. Whatever it was it ensured that he lived long enough to see his mother die and the world come to ruin. He didn't belong on the Earth or in the Night realm. He was something that was never supposed to exist and who thrived in the space between worlds. He didn't belong to any one world so he made hundreds of his own.

His own soul was split for the first time when he finished the alpha version of the OASIS. He kept on going, coding and creating and making _something_ that was just on the edge of reality. Made from magic and reached by chugging the ambient poison of the world and thickening it enough that no creature could ever get through again. Halliday stuttered and pushed people away but he was also a genius who could see things far beyond a normal human. When he finally died there was so much more that truly came alive.

_(His mother had died at 27, James had lived far beyond that but in the end it was both their hands that held the knife)_  

 

* * *

 

Fire Sprites were tricksters that you saw from the corner of your eye who could burn down houses by lighting a candle. Causing something big, by doing something small. They could make memories and manipulate emotions just as well as the Fae but they knew better than to display themselves and their capabilities. _(Even before the poison humans had gotten smart, warded themselves and kept the Fae at bay but you couldn't ward against what you didn't know was coming)_ and not one of them cared what the consequences were, or what happened to those who got in their way. They were smart, smart enough to conserve their energy and spend enough of it to make one more halfing. One who could burn down the world and then the Sprites would rise from the ashes as the sole conquerors. The Earth had so much potential and once they ruled it they could take everything else. Unfortunately, Samantha had only received a portion of her heritage. Not that she ever knew she could have been part of something more, memories were fleeting and the poison was rather good at isolating her.

Halflings were the best and the worst of both worlds. They were the only ones who could survive both the unexplained and the scientific without serious damage to one half. Fire Sprites halflings may be more powerful than most but they were only ever  _half_ Sprite. Samantha had the hair and spirit burn to prove that she was not totally human but surrounded by them and far away from her other family she might as well have been. The same ability that allowed her to breathe the smog and use electricity without being fried cut her off from outside contact or control. She had her own mind and just like fire, she couldn't be kept contained for long.

Her dad had died and that was the catalyst. Sparks flew from her fingers and she burnt her own home to the ground along with every sign he had ever existed in her life. It had been labelled as an accident, there had been nothing left but it wasn't too hard to image a broken wire or leaking gas pipe. Surely the little girl couldn't have started it, there wasn't a mark on her and she would have had to be at the centre of the blaze. The sparks faded after a while but the memories never did.

_(She was half fire and ready to burn down the world just like she was supposed to, but IOI would make a nice appetizer)_

The Easter Egg was the key to it all. If someone else got it, anyone except IOI, the OASIS would be relatively safe as long as it wasn't sold anyways but that was a different problem. For now she needed to stall IOI. She lit another fire, it was supposed to be small, a couple pieces of wood put together like a campfire near a smoke detector. They would all have to leave the loyalty centre for a while and if they didn't they might get shut down for safety hazards. It was an optimistic thought, one that was enough to fan the flames into something that consumed another building. She threw up in an alley nearby as fire trucks screamed through the crowded streets. The bile ate away at her throat but the smell of burnt flesh would haunt her for years.

That was when the rebellion found her, Samantha never quite figured out how they did when none of the law enforcement could. Maybe it was because they were desperate enough to bet their hopes on a scared little girl. Maybe they knew how much damage someone who had just lost a family member could do. Either way they still picked her up off of the streets and gave her a new purpose. She would be their recruiter, the face of the rebellion, the sixer fixer. 

Ar3mis was born for that exact purpose. For the first year she kept her head down for the most part, worked on building up her skill and her quality of gear. And occasionally she would come across someone she could convince to help her, help the cause. She had always been good at that, convincing people, she could spin things and tweak people's perceptions so they aligned with what she said. It took some time to build up, it would start as a simmering in her stomach and then the warmth would spread the same way as when she lit a fire until she was a raging inferno. No one could tell that her skin could burn someone in the OASIS but by the time it had reached that point she had already gotten then convinced. It helped that she picked her targets wisely. 

After about a year she started live streaming, uploading videos and putting her opinion out to the world. It gave her a bigger audience and it made it so that she didn't have to looking for people, but it also made her a target. There was a reason why she had a ten second delay set up on her streams. The rebellion got bigger, smarter, better but so did IOI. There were always more and more loyalty centres opening up and there were too many squads active at once to sabotage them all. By the time she realized they were losing she had become one of the people the new recruits looked up to. She was one of the people in charge but she didn't have the answers. None of them did.

When she had realized this she had frozen, just for a moment and thankfully not in game but the familiar temptation was already rising. It took time and money to build a fully functioning centre and if she destroyed them it would cut back progress by a ridiculous amount. Then she looked around, there were more of them than before. Entire families spread out between a number of safe houses, if there was a sudden rash of arsons people would look into it. The rebellion would be discovered and it would be shut down and she couldn't be the one to cause that. So Art3mis kept on appearing. 

Parzival was an easy mark. He didn't have any anger for IOI that she could use but he was a good player, possibly better than her and he was falling all over himself to help her. His friend would also be useful but he seemed less gullible, less trusting and that would make it difficult but building an iron giant was nothing to scoff at so she had to try. Parzival's knowledge on Halliday was a bit of a surprise and a nice one, Halliday said many things and the majority of them could be interpreted in multiple different ways, all she had to do was get him thinking her way. She pulled at the warmth as she challenged his reasoning and picked apart his arguments. The heat didn't come. Instead a cold slowly seeped into her heart and Art3mis practically fled the garage after she had finished speaking but the chill still lingered.

The echo was still there when she went to the next race, he had figured something out. She tugged at the fire, tried to get him to tell her but it was like a bucket of ice had been poured over her head. Her words slid off him like oil on water. It was a bad idea to look back after the race had started, it was more likely to get her zeroed out then amount anything but it allowed her to see that Parzival wasn't moving forwards, he was going backwards.

Finally, finally! After years of work she had something to grasp at that might help them win. Parzival wasn't a pawn to be moved around by words and batted eyelashes, she could see that now. He was an ally she desperately needed right now so she would have to suck it up and treat him like and equal if she wanted a shot at getting that egg. 

_(She could burn all she wanted but if she wanted anyone left after the ashes had settled she needed to start building bridges and not destroy them)_

 

* * *

 

Cats were said to have nine lives. In a world of myths that hid from sight that was one that held no truth in it, but cats did have an affinity for the number nine. There were many reasons for it but it started with the Cat Gods. There were quite a few cat _g_ ods, the Egyptian Bastet, the Mayan jaguar god, Dawon the tigress, and the Barong Ket to name a few. But there were only nine _true_ Cat Gods. Two have been lost to time in the minds of men and many, many false ones had taken their place. When dealing with cats, nine was a powerful number.

Cat Siths were usually born when one had gained the favour of one the nine cat gods. It was difficult, yes, but not impossible. The only other way was to be born from two other Cat Siths, there were no halflings amongst their ranks. _(Some nights his mother would whisper the name of the human she had once loved, who had died in the trials. Then one night she forgot it)_ the number of Cat Siths was actually quite small considering the total population of humans on the Earth. There were always more than nine of them but never over ninety-nine. The actual numbers were usually on the high end due to their longer life span but they had dropped at certain points in history.

The Cat Sith who would eventually take the name of Toshiro grew up on a hidden island, learning about the nine Cat Gods and what the Cat Siths provided in return for their patronage. Half of the Cat Siths lived in remote places such as the mountains or remaining forests to provide the Cat Gods with a connection to the natural world and reinforcing the dwindling patches of nature. The other half was sent to cities and allowed the Cat Gods a way to adapt to the technological poison and combat its effects.

Toshiro’s mother had been assigned to the arctic region and he had assumed he would follow her back there when he finished learning the basic magics. Yet he had been set in an entirely different grouping. He had been tempted to plead with the Gods to reconsider their decision but they were his patrons and so he left the island with a heavy heart. He had never seen his mother after that day and he doubted he ever would again.

Due to the long lifespan of Cat Siths their physical growth rate was also slowed. By the time Toshiro had left the island and adopted his current name he only had the physical body of a teenager. As far as any human was concerned he should be in school, not getting a job. That wasn’t even considering the fact he _would_ have to go through schooling to get any sort of job at a tech company.

He knew that some Cat Siths took decades to find their niche, but, he admitted to himself, Toshiro was a little but desperate to prove himself. So he turned his attention to the only technological thing it was apparently acceptable for him to be doing at his apparent age; video games. No other Cat Sith had bothered with them yet so Toshiro was not only going to be the first, he was going to eventually be the _best._

Video games started out small, it was new ground being breached and at first it was only a few people buying them. The market took off quickly, then the industry, and it _was_ an industry now, developed genres. There was first person shooters, horror, mystery, strategy, puzzle, indie. It became a challenge to keep up with them all and while Toshiro adored the challenge it was easy to see he simply didn’t have enough time to play every single game that came out. He had school and he could only go so many days without sleep.

For a while a crushing disappointment consumed him. He was supposed to be the _best_! The first Cat Sith to see the potential in video games and how much influence it would eventually have! He could barely keep up with the few genres he had limited himself to let alone the entirety of the industry. Then the OASIS came into being.

Toshiro wasn’t ashamed to admit that he had thought the idea would never take off. The amount of processing power required and the amount of copyright issues it would run into would shut it down quickly. Much to his astonishment none of that happened. Instead, the game took off and Daito was born.

Changing names was easy for Toshiro by this point. He had had to change out his legal documents over half a dozen times by the time the OASIS came to fruition and that included changing his name. Not to mention the amount of usernames and nicknames he had acquired over the years.

_(He never let himself forget them, forget the hundreds of people he pretended to be)_

The OASIS was the best thing that had happened to Toshiro. Ever. He mostly abandoned his others games and focused on the OASIS which turned out to be one of his best decisions ever because it wasn’t long before half the world was on it. It was also where he had met Sho.

Toshiro had been entering the OASIS for the better part of its existence by the time he met the Sho. By human standards he was also considered a child, by Cat Sith standards he was an infant but Toshiro found himself enjoying the other boy’s company. Up until then, he had been emulating his mother’s cold distance that she had maintained with everyone except for him but he never managed to uphold the façade when Sho was around. Eventually he dropped it altogether.

In the long run all the attachment he formed would cause was pain but he could enjoy it while it lasted. Toshiro made others friends as well, not quite as close as Sho but friends none the less. Even when the Egg Hunt was announced the two of them stuck together. If one thought they had a lead they would tell the other immediately and they would investigate together.

After Parzival found the first key Toshiro, as Daito, suddenly found himself working with the rest of the “high-five”. They found the second key together and everything seemed to be lined up for him having a solid shot at inheriting the biggest gaming corporation currently existing. Forget mastering the game, if he could control it then he would be the most successful Cat Sith in all of history.

Then IOI tried to assassinate him.

 

It was a horrible attempt on their part, even if he hadn’t heard them practically stomping their way through the building up to his apartment they did an awful job sneaking up on him. Toshiro could have activated any number of wards in an instant, the detection ones had gone off as soon as they had stepped within a twenty meter radius of the building. One of the more redundant wards flung anyone in its area of effect out of the area but it couldn’t be used because these were highly trained agents and he didn’t exactly have an explanation for the obvious use of magic.

One of the better wards vaporised any living thing in his apartment which was handy for when there were flies. Toshiro probably would have used that one as well except one of his attackers was a child of Morrigan and it would be very bad if she was killed by his hand. Very bad translated to the goddess’ wrath being incurred and him being disavowed as damage control. So, very bad.

The other option was to ambush them as they traversed the building, Toshiro had far more subtle magics in his arsenal and his combat skills had been kept up in the OASIS. But that would take a lot of work and more people would just keep coming so he took the easy option instead. He let himself get pushed out of the window.

It was a humiliating was to go but there weren’t many other options. There was also the annoyance of having to use one of his transformations at the same time as he created a body double so there would be a proper corpse. The transformations were the last lesson a Cat Sith ever learned before being sent out into the world and they were gifted by the Gods themselves. Dropping the number from nine to eight was beyond irritating.

But it was too late to choose another course of action, Toshiro was dead and a black cat easily slipped away from the scene.

It would be _so_ easy to just leave it there. He could just grab the two keys again and continue on his own but there was the fact that the “high-five” had been his best shot at finding the third before anyone else did. _And Sho would be distraught_ a treacherous part of his mind whispered.

The indecision lingered for a beat longer. The child of Morrigan would come back if Toshiro and Daito didn’t die and that was the reason he had faked his death in the first place instead of just sneaking out of the building. And . . . that really wasn’t a viable reason was it?

The cat let out a sigh, well as much of a sigh as a cat could before walking in a different direction. Decision made.

As long as the Morrigan’s child’s spirit remained in her body it would be fine, Toshiro could work with that. But for now he had to find a way to contact Sho and let him know he wasn’t actually dead.

_(This was one name he couldn’t quite bring himself to let disappear)_

 

* * *

 

Wade grew up utterly fascinated by the ocean. While the only thing he really did as a kid was go on the OASIS he actually used it for just two things. Going to school and exploring the deep blue. His mom never checked on him anyways so he was free to do as he wished after class ended so he went diving.

The oceans of the OASIS was teeming with life and colour. There were thousands of fish not to mention the dolphins, turtles and whales. He mostly tried to avoid sharks on the off chance that one would attack him and he would lose all the notes he had made on everything he came across.

On the beaches you could find shells or sand dollars strewn about, even sea glass was occasionally thrown into the mix, Wade kept every single piece he found in a jar and once they were filled he put them on a shelf. By the time he stopped collecting he had over fifty jars of coloured glass. The shallows were covered in brightly coloured coral and was teeming with life, there were the regular fish but there were also manta rays and sea turtles and dolphins. As you got deeper down the whole world turned blue and green. There was less stuff down there but you could find jellyfish and eels!

Wade kept careful records of everything he had encountered in the oceans of the OASIS to the finest detail. He filled out pages of information during school and accompanied them with photos taken by the floating camera. The notebooks he used varied in size and design but the collection just kept on growing.

At that point in his life Wade wanted to be a marine biologist. He had it all planned out, he would finished elementary school and focus on the sciences as he got into high school. Then he could apply for scholarships to pay for university or collage. It was a secret dream of his, one that he didn’t tell to anyone else, not anyone at school or anywhere else on the OASIS. But it wasn’t like anyone asked either.

Then his mom died and he realized that real life wasn’t like life in the OASIS. His mom was gone and he was shipped off to his aunt Alice who probably didn’t even know he existed until his social worker approached her.

If Wade had to pick one moment from the entirety of his life, that would probably be the one where he stopped caring about the real world.

First thing he did was burn his journals and then he stopped going to the OASIS’s oceans. He swore to never go back ever again, not for anything. He started focusing on the more competitive aspects of the game as a distraction at first and then because he wanted to win. Win what? He wasn’t entirely sure.

_(There was always the temptation to go back, but it wasn’t a real ocean and that was what saved him)_

He met Aech in a competitive match and they became best friends in the OASIS and it wasn’t like Wade had any friends outside the OASIS so Aech probably counted everywhere. Even though he had moved in with his aunt Alice he barely interacted with her or whoever her latest boyfriend was. He spent his days in his hideout that he had stuck in-between old cars, traversing the OASIS. He met Sho and Daito through Aech and even if they weren’t best friends they were at least allies. People who he could hang out with and count on to have his back, better than reality any day.

Then the hunt for Halliday’s egg began. It became his whole life, his whole purpose. The first purpose he let himself have since he burned those notes so long ago.

Wade spent five years trying to beat the race, trying to beat Kong and the sixers before he met Art3mis. There was a connection there, even if it wasn’t something built from common interests or shared experiences like with Aech. This was something the same and yet different, like he had found a kindred spirit.

He knew for a fact that what she showed him about herself wasn’t everything there was. Everyone lied online, it was a simple fact that even he adhered to. Parzival had the confidence, the skills, and the cool that Wade from the stacks didn’t. Art3mis was obviously different from who she was outside the OASIS but it was the things like ideals and philosophies that a person adhered to which never changed, which you could always count on as being real. Art3mis cared about winning the contest, about beating the sixers and she knew almost as much about Halliday as he did. That took dedication.

It was a surprisingly short time later that he could confirm that he wasn’t wrong about Art3mis as well. Wade had always been a good judge of character, even without Parzival’s confidence. Samantha wasn’t what he imagined but that was mostly due to the fact that he hadn’t bothered imagining a whole lot. He spent more time watching her streams than imagining who she might be in real life. She still had that fire simmering beneath the surface in the real world, it was just better hidden beneath the quiet kid that got her looked over.

It was easy to tell that Sorrento was full of crap when he tried to get him to join up with IOI. Mostly because he wasn’t that good of an actor, but also because from what he knew that didn’t sound like the person who ran the sixers. Sorrento wasn’t the type to play fair or truthfully, he was a businessman, he would skew the stakes in his favour in every way possible. He also wasn’t the type to listen to other people.

Wade had tried. He had _tried_ to tell Sorrento that he wasn’t in the trailer but he wouldn’t listen to him. Maybe if he had been given time he could have convinced him but there wasn’t any time. He’d run, tried to reach the trailer and warn Alice for all that she didn’t care. It was probably the only thing he had ever put effort into in the real world in ages. Then Rick wouldn’t listen and now everyone was dead.

He hadn’t really known anyone else on the stack personally but they were still _people_. People Sorrento had blown up just because he had assumed that Wade would be caught in the blast. He killed tens of people and it was for absolutely nothing because Wade hadn’t even died with them. He had to resist the urge to throw up after the thought had fully processed.

Samantha didn’t listen either, she shut the escape hatch behind him and now she was in the loyalty centre risking everything to bring down the shield. All he had to do was raise an army. Which was easier said than done because all he had to do was _raise an army_ because that didn’t seem like an impossible task? But Wade was sick of people not _listening_ to him.

Because he was a kid, because he was trying to save his own skin, because his life was apparently worth more than someone else’s. Now he just felt tired.

The act of tossing the camera into the air was a nostalgic one. It brought him back to the days where he had explored the OASIS just for the sake of it. There must be a visual glitch _(there’s no glitch)_ because the screen looks almost as blue as it did back then but he doesn’t have time to scan for one let alone fix it. He doesn’t stop to think as he talks, just draws on Parzival’s endless confidence and lets the words flow. He doesn’t stumble over a word or pause to get another thought together because so much has led to this point, so much death, and he can’t let it all go to waste because he can’t pronounce some stupid word.

He steals some of Art3mis’ fiery conviction and hands it out to the rest of the OASIS, makes them just as ready to take down IOI as her. He lets himself keep a scrap of the conviction to stave off the mounting weariness.

When he ends the stream, Wade lets his eyes scan the empty plains as the blue glitch _(still not a glitch)_ faded from his vision. There’s a moment where a sudden cold raises goosebumps on his arms but he rubs them away as he turns away. Not bothering to look at the empty field, there’s no point as it will take a while longer for people to arrive if the transporters are as jammed as he thinks they are.

Aech and Sho were beside him as he faced the glowing barrier. He just _knows_ that Sorrento is in there, watching him with all the smugness that a corporate asshole could muster. Wade didn’t bother turning away from the shield until he heard the rumbling start. Then he turned as the sound of millions of feet impacting on the ground formed the sound of war drums. Battle cries filled the air and siege machines fired on the barrier.

It took a few minutes but the shield came crashing down on Sorrento and the final battle began. It was messy and chaotic and unpredictable and the sixers never stood a chance. The sound of the ocean pounded in his ears, overpowering the boom box, as he jumped into the fray.

_(There wasn’t an ocean in the OASIS, only lines and code that simulated one, but Wade_ was _the ocean)_

 

* * *

 

The Sorrentos were an old family, one that had walked the earth long before humans had appeared and they had been forced to don the façade. The façade that had later become more real than what lay underneath. Bloodlines had been mixed and diluted until there was almost no trace of supernatural origins that remained. Yet, for some unidentifiable reason, Nolen had the strongest connection to the other side of his family in centuries.

In the human world the unbalanced mixture came out in more subtle ways than one would imagine. His senses had always been sharper, he had been able to hear a conversation from across a building, he could tell the blood inheritance of a person with ease, and his eyes were better than any bird of prey’s. Nolen could tell what to run and hide from and what should be running from him.

_(He didn’t need to run from any in the waking world)_

At night his mind would drift into the darkened place where his ancestors resided. They would speak to him, whisper tales of his family history and how he was their legacy, how he would bring their family back to the human world. Nolen’s ears would bleed from the ancient tongue and his bones would freeze and drag his form to the ground under their gaze. When he woke the feeling would dissipate but their stares lingered, always watching.

When he met F’Nale he was almost overwhelmed by the raging screams of the Morrigan that tore through her veins. It couldn’t be more than a whisper in her head but by then Nolen knew how to make the most of what he was given. His ancestors agreed with his decision to take advantage of her skill set but also warned him not to inform her of her heritage. The Morrigan would be of better use while she was sleeping.

The secondary waking trait did not appear until after he had met F’Nale, as if his ancestors had finally deigned to give him it as a gift. Even before he had been able to pin people with his gaze but now it full on paralyzed them. Made their hearts skip a beat before being able to move again.

Nolen knew how his employees whispered about the look. In the break rooms or when he wasn’t nearby, they didn’t know he could still hear them and he didn’t let on. They spoke of how if someone really messed up he’d stare at them and they’d freeze like a deer in the headlights. Then they’d talk of when he used it on other people with a sort of awe, board members, lawyers and other officials that always appeared to brush it off but his employees knew the signs. When the gossipers realized that the look didn’t even faze F’Nale she became an almost legendary figure in the office.

It was useful in the waking world, made threats so much easier, but it was in the OASIS where it became a visible phenomenon.

In the OASIS your avatar could look like anyone or anything, nothing was permanent but Nolen had always preferred to appear as the businessman he was. A bit more intimidating than his actual form but other than that it was similar enough. Aside from the eyes.

He hadn’t paid for eyes that turned gold on occasion, most of the time they were a luminescent blue which prompted players to think he had spent a _lot_ of coin. It looked too similar to his ancestor’s eyes for him to attempt to change them. His eyes burned when they turned gold, a dull ache in the back of his skull. His avatar’s eyes were either blue or gold, but Nolen knew they could also turn red.

He knew what the colours meant of course, when he was small he had asked about the changing eyes colours of those who were not found in the waking world. Blue was calm, gold was irritated, red was carnage and death. That had been how he defined his ancestor’s moods as a child. Now, he knew when they turned gold to acquiesce to their demands, teenage rebellion was not worth the pain it caused.

So logically, Nolen knew that his eyes could turn red. He just hadn’t assumed they would do so. In hindsight he should have felt the buildup, they had been flickering for days beforehand, so when they blazed red as he pushed down on the cataclysm he really shouldn’t have been so surprised. Then they vanished beneath the roll of blue and white that washed over Planet Doom.

It was a very vindictive feeling watching the score board be wiped clean, knowing that everything on the planet had been wiped away. Three easy steps and decades worth of time worth of time and effort from thousands of players was wiped from the OASIS. Nothing could have survived.

Not a single player who lay outside or inside the war rooms of IOI remained. The battle had concluded and Nolen had won because everyone else had lost.

_(He won this battle but he was losing another one, fought in the cold and dark)_

It would be simple to have the sixers flood the race and the movie, make sure not a single other player could get even a single key. One of them would get all three and then it would be handed over to Nolen. Gregarious Games would be absorbed into IOI and Nolen would be the reason why.

Then Parzival’s name reappeared on the leaderboard. It was impossible, he had watched as the name blinked off the leaderboard, Parzival would have to have done both challenges in a matter of seconds. All the respawn locations in the fortress were also gone and yet Parzival was standing there. No other players or sixers left to stop him in the OASIS.

Which only left the waking world. His eyes closed for a moment, and for the first time he felt them burn in the waking world and not just the OASIS. Nolen almost seemed to be on autopilot as he walked towards the rows of jeeps. Almost as an afterthought, he took on of the security team’s guns with him.

Eventually he found the boy, hidden safely inside the truck that was barreling towards the stacks. Happily ruining everything Nolen had ever worked for. He put his foot to the floor and let the jeep ran into the truck, sending the vehicle spinning into the confines of the stacks. The gun was clenched tightly in his fist, he could not afford to fail now, not after all of this.

The crows parted at the sight of the gun, fast enough that he couldn’t bother wasting a shot but slow enough he couldn’t reach the van instantly. But make it he did and the door to the van opened with a jerk.

There was a precious moment where he was overwhelmed by the presences. Of the five teenagers, _teenagers_ , only two were fully human. The ratio was absurdly high considering that up until this point he had only ever sensed four others who were not totally human. Only two had any semblance of strength. Nolen was almost sent reeling by the overload of information, mixing together making it hard to tell who was what or what was who.

Salt water, burning buildings, fur, singing, screaming, gold. He saw gold. Gold that emanated from Watts’ outstretched hands and that was reflected in his visor. The gold from the egg he had been chasing all these years.

His eyes finally stopped burning.

Nolen sagged, using the door to hold up his weight as all his strength left him with the burning. He had lost everything, a fact that was only compounded by the police who showed up only moments later. It was over.

That night his dreams were of red eyes, stone, and phantom pain. _(Pain that wasn’t so phantom while he was still trapped)_

**Author's Note:**

> So I wrote fantasy in a nonfantasy genre. This is going to get no hits. This little project started because I noticed that Sorrento's avatar's eyes changed colour and I could have sworn they were red when he activated the cataclysm. Then it evolved into explaining how Toshiro survived in the movie.
> 
> Sorry for those who were expecting a chapter for Rift but I got caught up in this instead. Maybe next week.
> 
> *went back and edited it so if this version seems a bit different that's all.


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